Gov. Ron DeSantis was not too long ago requested about Florida’s property insurance coverage disaster, the place insurance coverage corporations are forcing Floridians to pay larger and better costs for house insurance coverage – in the event that they don’t simply cancel their protection solely.
“Knock on wooden we gained’t have a giant storm this summer season,” DeSantis mentioned.
Excuse me? That’s your plan?
Perhaps to be further secure, we must always all search for a number of genie lamps and check out wishing for a secure insurance coverage market, too.
I suppose it’s in all probability not stunning that the perfect Ron DeSantis can give you is knocking on wooden. This can be a governor who has made it crystal clear that he would a lot fairly spend his time making an attempt to divide Floridians with faux tradition wars fairly than making an attempt to resolve the true cost-of-living challenges that impression all of us.
And the reality is, the final time Gov. DeSantis determined to do one thing about property insurance coverage, he simply made the state of affairs worse. He signed a invoice final December that made it even simpler for insurance coverage corporations to lift charges – whereas additionally making it tougher for Floridians to make these corporations really pay claims.
This was a giveaway to the insurance coverage trade, pure and easy – and it hasn’t labored. One insurance coverage firm simply hit a St. Augustine lady with a $36,000 invoice. In the meantime, Farmers Insurance coverage introduced that it’s pulling out of Florida altogether.
A part of the issue is that too many individuals appear extra centered on discovering scapegoats than discovering options. As an example, the governor and most of my colleagues within the Florida Legislature appear incapable of doing something apart from blaming trial attorneys and passing legal guidelines that make it tougher for Floridians to entry the courts.
However we don’t have time to maintain pointing fingers. This can be a difficult subject — and everybody should play a task in making an attempt to repair it.
Look, there is no such thing as a query that extreme lawsuits and litigation can drive up prices. However we’ve already handed loads of reforms to handle that.
However we additionally know that insurance coverage corporations have been utilizing accounting tips to tug monumental earnings out of Florida in years the place we’ve not had hurricanes – solely to then declare insolvency when a giant storm hits. We have to cease that from taking place, too.
Florida has additionally offered $3 billion value of bailouts to property insurers over the previous two years. However we want to verify these financial savings begin getting handed on to Floridians — and never simply pocketed by insurance coverage executives.
And it’s long gone time that leaders in Tallahassee begin getting critical about combating local weather change — weaning ourselves off of fossil gas, supporting extra improvement of cleaner, renewable fuels and fostering the adoption of all the things from rooftop photo voltaic panels to electrical automobiles. Local weather change is spurring stronger hurricanes, larger storm surges and heavier rainfall — that are in flip driving up insurance coverage costs.
We must also be making extra use of Residents Property Insurance coverage, the state-run insurance coverage firm — the one insurance coverage firm whose costs aren’t inflated by revenue margins and that we all know gained’t flee the state on the first signal of bother.
Insurance coverage lobbyists hold pushing adjustments that pressure increasingly Floridians out of Residents and into personal insurance coverage that each prices extra and covers much less. And so they make disingenuous claims that having extra folks in Residents places the remainder of us on the hook for a storm, even when it hits in one other a part of the state.
However the fact is that we’re all already paying for the price of unreliable personal insurance coverage: All policyholders in Florida are presently paying 3.7% in assessments on their house or auto insurance policies to cowl the collapse of at the very least 10 insurance coverage suppliers over the previous few years.
The reality is that there aren’t any straightforward, pain-free fixes to an issue as advanced as property insurance coverage in a state that stands proud into the Atlantic Ocean at a time of climbing temperatures, rising seas and stronger hurricanes.
However I and my Democratic colleagues within the Florida Legislature have developed a sequence of considerate proposals to reform Florida’s insurance coverage market — plans centered on offering direct aid to Floridians and holding all dangerous actors accountable.
I gained’t fake our plans are good.
However they’re lots higher than simply knocking on wooden.
Anna V. Eskamani represents District 42 within the Florida Home.
